Or, from Ted Bergstrom and Preston McAfee, use the Journal Cost-Effectiveness search engine to
find internationally-published journals and rank them by price per article or citation.
2004 data |
2006 data

Here at U of Illinois, the average cost per title jumped 10% between 2003 and 2004 [
2].

While many university libraries face severe budget cuts, large commercial publishers in the
academic journal market have enjoyed increasing profits. In 2002, for instance, revenue rose 26%
and operating profit increased to 25% for Elsevier, the largest journal publisher in the science,
technology, and medical field [
3].

On average, libraries pay 4 to 6 times as much per page for journals owned by commercial
publishers as they do for journals owned by non-profit societies. [
4]

BACKGROUND

Traditionally, scholars at research institutions have made their research available through a
"gift exchange" arrangement, whereby they submit articles to publishers and serve on peer-review
editorial boards with little or no expectation of personal financial gain, but with the implicit
understanding that the publishers will provide the widest possible audience for their research. As
outlined by Edwards and Shulenburger, "Beginning in the late 1960s and early '70s, this gift
exchange began to break down. A few commercial publishers recognized that research generated at
public expense and given freely for publication by the authors represented a commercially
exploitable commodity" [
5]. Prior to this breakdown, most journals were published by scholarly societies
that charged enough for their journals to break even and fund society activities, but were
essentially not-for-profit ventures. By contrast, the current academic journal market is dominated
by a few very large multinational firms that have methodically bought up the top titles in various
fields and steadily ratcheted up the prices for them. As Edwards and Shulenburger put it,

The old model operated on the basis of gift exchange to ensure wide distribution of
what was readily acknowledged--indeed trumpeted--as clearly a public good. The new model operates
for profit; it essentially says, "If you want access, pay up and we'll set the prices." [
6]

As commercial publishers came to dominate academic publishing, North American research libraries
faced an average annual increase of 8.5% in journal prices between 1986 and 2001 [
7]. The
book and journal costs chart shows a drop in
the average journal unit cost between 2000 and 2001. While this may appear to be a salutary
development, it actually reflects a trend that is deeply troubling to many university librarians:
bundling. This trend, also called "the
big deal," entails publishers offering libraries packages of
titles, as opposed to the traditional single-title-subscription model. While such bundling deals
often mean that libraries pay less, on average, per title, it also means that libraries are often
forced into subscribing to less-popular titles in order to gain access to the more heavily used
journals in the bundle. It takes away one of the libraries most important responsibilities:
tailoring its collection to its users' needs.

SAYING "ENOUGH!": UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOLARS RESPOND

Faced with ever-increasing journal prices and dwindling budgets, universities are being forced
to take action. In 2003, Cornell cancelled its subscriptions to more than 200 Elsevier journals [
8]. The University of Wisconsin-Madison has withdrawn from the Big Deal [
9]. Scholars are also taking action. In 2003, researchers at the University of
California-San Francisco called upon their colleagues throughout the world to boycott the journals
published by the Cell Press (owned by Elsevier) after the publisher asked the University of
California for $90,000 in annual fees for continued access to the six Cell Press titles--this in
addition to the $8 million that the university already paid Elsevier annually for online journal
subscriptions [
10]. As another example, in January 2004, the entire editorial board of
Elsevier's
Journal of Algorithms resigned in protest of the publishers' pricing policies, and went on
to begin publishing a competing journal,
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, in partnership with the Association for Computing
Machinery [
11].

FIND OUT MORE

From Ted Bergstrom and Preston McAfee, use the Journal Cost-Effectiveness search engine to find
internationally-published journals and rank them by price per article or citation.
2002 data |
2004-2006 data

Sticker Shock: Did you know
that, for the cost of a year's subscription to the
Journal of Applied Polymer Science, you could get a well-equipped new Toyota Corolla? This
and other hair-raising comparisons are available at Cornell's online journal cost exhibit.